*Lexi. In here.*
I rounded the kitchen bench and found Syl sniffing at a pool of liquid that spread across the tiled floor. In its centre lay the smashed remains of a coffee mug.
Syl looked up at me, her green eyes anxious. *I think she left in a hurry.*
***
We were still standing there, staring at the smashed mug in horror, when a phone began to ring.
I scrabbled around on the dining table and found it half-hidden by the pile of presents, vibrating urgently against the pitted wooden surface of the table. It was Holly’s. I recognised the diamanté-studded case.
*Answer it,* Syl urged.
I fumbled it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Lexi! Just the person I was hoping to speak to.”
The speaker’s voice had a jolly tone that was all wrong for the situation I found myself in.
“Who is this?”
“Have you forgotten me so soon? Really, I thought I’d made more of an impression. It’s Erik. Erik Anders.”
Syl’s tail lashed from side to side. All this time, we’d been hiding from this guy. And now he’d found us. This was bad. Really bad.
“What do you want?” Was it too much to hope he had nothing to do with Holly’s disappearance? Yes, of course it was. We were standing in Holly’s apartment, and he was calling us on Holly’s own phone. But how did he know we’d be here? Was he watching us right now? A chill shuddered down my spine at the thought.
“My desires haven’t changed. I want you to work for me.”
“Mine haven’t either. I’m not interested.” I flung my senses out, searching every animal mind in the vicinity, hoping to find some trace of the man on the other end of the line.
“And yet I feel sure I can change your mind.”
There was a sudden heavy breathing and a familiar voice came on the line. “Lexi?”
“Holly! Are you all right?”
Anders’ smarmy tones filled my ear again. “The lady is perfectly comfortable. As long as you get that ring for me, she will stay that way.”
This felt like being trapped in a bad thriller movie. I knew what the next line had to be. “And if I don’t?”
“I really think you should,” he said, almost gently. No threats. He didn’t have to put it into words. He was an underpowered fireshaper with big ambitions. I already knew the depths to which he was prepared to sink to get what he wanted. If I didn’t deliver, Holly would die. “And Lexi? Let’s keep it between ourselves, hmm? If you bring anyone else into it, that could be bad news for our friend and her baby. Get the ring and wait for further instructions. Keep this phone with you.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer. I guess he didn’t need to. It was pretty obvious what my answer would be. What else could I do but obey?
Syl leapt up onto the table and plopped herself down right in front of me. Her green eyes stared at me, unblinking.
*Time to cut and run,* she said.
For a moment I thought I’d heard wrong. “Run?” I repeated stupidly.
*We can’t save her.* The tip of Syl’s tail twitched, betraying the agitation she was trying to hide. She might have saved herself the trouble—I could feel the turmoil of her emotions through our link anyway. Fear dominated, laced with anger, but there was also a healthy dose of … guilt?
“We have to try.” It was my fault Holly was in danger. I’d led that bastard right to her.
*Lexi, we can’t. This guy doesn’t play by the rules. You know that. Sure, if we don’t bring him the ring, he kills her. But if we do bring it, he still kills her, and he kills us, too.* She leapt down from the table and headed for the door. *Whatever we do, she dies. There’s no way to win this one. The best we can do is run, and hope that this time he doesn’t find us.*
She didn’t mention my break-in at Johnson’s place, though I could feel the accusation lurking at the forefront of her mind. She thought that had led Anders to us. I was horribly afraid she was right. This was all my fault.
That just made me more determined to find a way out of this mess for all of us. I tucked Holly’s phone into my back pocket and followed Syl across the landing into our own apartment.
“I’ll think of something.” I started piling things into a backpack: spare clothes, my throwing knives, a set of lock picks. I wished I still had my bow, but that was hardly a discreet weapon; I’d had to leave it behind when I’d left the human territories. I could cheerfully have used Anders for target practice right then. “I’m not abandoning Holly. She’s my friend.”
And there weren’t too many people I could say that about.
*I like her just as much as you do,* Syl said, *but it’s too late for her. All we can do is save ourselves.*
I frowned at her. “The old Syl wouldn’t have said that. You’ve been a cat too long.”
*The old Syl hadn’t watched her whole life go up in flames in front of her. Anders is a shaper. Your knives aren’t going to do jack shit against him.*
I zipped the pack shut. There was precious little in it. Most of our stuff had been left behind when we fled the city. Now we travelled lighter than light. Not much to show for a life, but possessions weren’t that important when it came down to it. No one lay on their deathbed wishing they’d collected more stuff. People were what mattered.
“You can run if you want.” I shouldered the backpack and looked down at the dainty black cat perched on the bed. Still she wouldn’t take human form. When she’d showed herself to Holly earlier, I’d thought we’d had a breakthrough, but this latest development had obviously been too much for her. “But I’m going after Holly. Joe would hunt me down and kill me if I let anything happen to her.”
Her tail twitched impatiently. *This is no time for jokes.*
“Who’s joking? I reckon he would. Are you coming or not?”
And who could blame him? It wasn’t just Holly’s life at stake—there was the baby, too. It just showed what a lowlife scum Anders was, that he could threaten an innocent baby’s life. Someone needed to do something about that guy.
And since I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on, it looked like that someone would have to be me.
Shame I couldn’t get a powerful shaper like Steele on my side. I bet he could put Anders in his place. But looking like he’d stepped off the cover of a romance novel didn’t make Steele a hero—far from it. I couldn’t trust him any more than I could trust Anders. In fact, they were probably working together. It was more than a little suspicious that Anders had found me right after Steele turned up, whatever Alberto said. Shapers were all the same. The sensible thing would be to rescue Holly and then disappear right out of Mr Hot Councillor’s life.
And if sensible left a taste of disappointment in my mouth, well, I’d get over it. There’d be time to regret the loss of that perfect arse and chiselled jaw later, if I managed to live through whatever Anders had planned for me.
I hurried down the stairs with only a brief backward glance for the little apartment. I’d been happy, in spite of the horror that had led us here, and that paranoid feeling of being watched that had taken weeks to shrug off. Resentment boiled through me as I unlocked my beat-up old car and threw the pack into the back seat. Syl leapt into the passenger seat, pointedly not talking to me. Damn Anders and his schemes. When would he stop hounding us over this stupid ring? I’d have liked to take the thing and hurl it into the sea right next to the mayor’s altarpiece.
How the hell was I going to get us all out of this alive?
I drove through the dark streets, my thoughts churning. Holly’s life and the baby’s—all our lives—depended on a lot of things. Whether I was as good a burglar as Anders thought. Whether this damn ring was even still where he’d told me it was three months ago.
And whether a lone human with a slightly quirky ability could hope to outmanoeuvre a shaper with the power of fire at his command.
The sound of the engine split the night as I headed for the highway and Crosston, three hours’ dr
ive away.
It wasn’t looking hopeful for the good guys.
12
The sun was struggling over the horizon by the time we hit the outskirts of Crosston. I’d lost track of how many times Holly’s phone had rung on the trip. Each time, I’d checked the caller ID in case it was Anders again, but each time it had been Joe. The poor guy would be beside himself with worry, but I couldn’t answer. Nothing good could come of dragging him into this mess. Werewolves were passionate creatures. No telling what he’d do if he heard his beloved wife had been kidnapped. Holly’s safety depended on my silence, so I let the phone ring, feeling like the worst friend in the world.
Syl hadn’t exactly been the most talkative travelling companion, but she’d clammed up completely about half an hour earlier, and now stared out the window, her green eyes expressionless. I stayed out of her head and gave her some room. Coming back was hard.
I stayed away from our old neighbourhood—the fewer people who knew we were in town the better—but even so there were reminders all around us. The bridge with its distinctive coat hanger shape, the Great Amphitheatre, the familiar streets sloping down to the harbour. Even I was affected, and I hadn’t grown up here like Syl. Everywhere I looked, I saw reminders of the life we’d lived, until it seemed I could smell smoke on the air. I turned the air vents to recycle and blasted the aircon through the car.
Everywhere, too, was the shaper presence. Official buildings flying flags in the shaper colours of ruby, sapphire, emerald, gold and diamond, ice sculptures that defied both the heat and gravity in front of some watershaper’s house, the twisted metal architecture that the fireshapers favoured for their office buildings. They liked to leave the visitor in no doubt. This is our town, shouted the buildings and the flags. Shapers live here, said the statues shooting flame, and the intricate ice carvings that never melted. Like it or leave.
I found a parking station and dumped the car. My rubber-soled shoes made no noise on the pavement as I made my way through quiet streets to Central Park, Syl cradled in my arms. It might look a little odd to be carrying a cat through the streets, but not as odd as having one follow at your heels like a dog, and neither of us wanted to split up. Office buildings loomed overhead, blocking the rising sun and making dark canyons of the streets below. I walked briskly, not meeting the eyes of the passers-by. They were mostly early birds turning up for work, though I passed a few joggers. None of them were shapers. The privileged classes didn’t get up this early.
I chose a quiet spot away from the main paths and sat down on the grass, which was still a little damp with morning dew. Syl disappeared into the bushes on her own errands—or maybe she just wanted to get away from me. Our mental link bristled with resentment and fear, and she hadn’t spoken a word. Office buildings encircled the park, their shadows stretching over the grass, except to the east. Shading my eyes, I squinted into the sun and stared at the long, low building there, its towers just clearing the tops of the trees. The Ruby Palace.
It was the most famous building in the city, and the most heavily guarded—the home of the Ruby Adept, leader of the fireshapers in New Holland and head of the Ruby Council.
It was also the place I had to break into. No pressure.
Hugging my knees to me, I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind. Not surprisingly, there were quite a few animals in range. The park was a vast green space in the centre of the city and though there were plenty of manicured picnic lawns, there were also wild spaces scattered throughout it. Lots of cats and dogs roamed the city streets, but a handful of foxes called the park home, and a colony of bats lit up like a Christmas tree to my mental vision as they climbed over each other and jostled for the best spots to sleep the day away. There were rodents and birds everywhere, plus fish in the ornamental lakes. Working with fish was hard. I connected best with warm-blooded creatures, though I could link with anything in a pinch, even reptiles or insects.
I skipped over the bright sparks of life outside, however. Later, I would use the birds to check the exterior views, but right now I was concerned with the inside of one building in particular.
Thankfully there were nearly always mice in a building that size, and this early in the day it was safe to send them scuttling about the interior. I lay back on the grass at the foot of a massive fig tree and shut my eyes, the better to focus on the guided tour.
The Ruby Palace had only three levels, but what it lacked in height it made up for in sprawl. Just as well there was more than one mouse, because the place covered a whole city block, and the ground floor was a maze of rooms, large and small. The main audience hall was a vast, echoing emptiness at the heart of the building, surrounded by corridors that snaked like veins through the rest of it. It looked like what it was: a building that had been added to several times over the years, resulting in a confusion of passageways and hidden nooks that nearly did my head in trying to keep straight.
The morning heated up as I lay there, searching the palace through beady mouse eyes. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find the ring on the ground floor, but I still wanted to have the layout committed to memory. Life had taught me always to expect the unexpected. There was no telling where I might have to run, or who might be chasing me at the time.
I wished I’d never heard of this damned ring—it had brought me nothing but trouble. I still had no idea how I was going to save Holly. All the advantages lay with Anders, and I couldn’t see a way to turn the situation to my advantage. Fear lay like a heavy weight on my chest. I had to force myself to focus on what I was doing. The first step was to get the ring; I’d worry about the rest of it later.
I flung a hand over my eyes; though they were closed, the sun made bright orange patterns on the inside of my lids as the shade from the branches overhead moved. My skin prickled with heat and my stomach gurgled a protest at the lack of food—hours had passed, and I’d missed breakfast. When I reached out through our link to Syl I found she was doing what cats do best: she was curled up in the sun somewhere asleep.
A shadow fell across my face. I opened my eyes and shot upright, pulse racing. Steele stood over me, his face stern and unreadable as he gazed down at me. “Where’s Holly?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” How had he found me? And why was he looking at me like that?
His eyes were as icy as a winter storm. “Bullshit.” He grabbed my arm and jerked me to my feet. “You’ve got her phone. Where is she?”
I tried to tug my arm free, but his grip was as hard as the look on his face. I started to deny it, but he frisked me one-handed and pulled Holly’s phone from my back pocket. If possible, his look was even grimmer as he dangled it in front of my eyes.
“Joe will be tearing Berkley’s Bay apart by now, looking for her. When I dropped him home and he found the place abandoned and both of you gone, he assumed the baby was on the way and you must have taken Holly to hospital. I’m afraid I wasn’t so trusting.” The way he was looking at me, you’d have thought I was something stinky he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe. My own temper began to rise. Exactly what was he accusing me of? “He went off to the hospital, expecting to find his wife in labour. I, on the other hand, had her phone traced, and followed it all the way to the city.”
“And what were you expecting to find? That Holly and I had run off together? Or that I’d killed her?” I finally succeeded in shaking off his hand, and glared at him, putting my own on my hips. “What kind of person do you think I am? Holly and Joe are my friends. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them. Not that I expect a shaper to grasp the concept of friendship.”
He folded his arms, though I was in no mood to admire the strong muscles of his forearms now. Though for just a moment there, when I’d first opened my eyes and seen him, his face had been the best thing I’d seen all day.
“Enlighten me, then. Explain what’s going on.”
The ice in the depths of his blue eyes had melted, and a fire now danced there instead. It occurred to me that enraging a firesha
per with cheap shots may not have been the smartest thing to do. I lifted my chin and held his burning gaze, but said nothing. Holly’s safety depended on my not telling anyone what was going on. He could go douse himself in the lake if he expected me to lose the chance to save her.
He growled in frustration and stepped in close, gripping my shoulders. “If there is a more infuriating woman in the world, Apollo forbid I ever meet her. Talk to me, Lexi. If you don’t, you can tell it to the provosts instead.” His fingers tightened. “Was that a flinch? You don’t like that idea?”
Of course I didn’t like that idea. Who would? The provosts were the shapers’ police force. Most of them weren’t shapers themselves, but they’d taken on their masters’ view of the world, and their reputation for bastardry was enough to make even the most innocent citizens avoid them. No one in their right mind would want to be taken in by the provosts. And if I were arrested now, before I could steal the ring and swap it for Holly, what would happen to her?
Shit. I stared up at that handsome face, so close to my own, and all I wanted to do was punch it. Why did bloody Jake Steele have to get involved? I’d had this under control. More or less.
“What’s it going to be, Lexi? I’m not a patient man.”
Oh, really? His patience was running out? Why did he always seem to be turning up lately, getting in my face? He could ruin everything. I stared at him in silent defiance.
“I can make you tell me. Do you need another demonstration?” Flames burst from his hands and licked up his arms.
I knocked his hands away, burning myself in his fire. “Will you cut that out?” I hissed. One of my wrists was badly scorched and throbbed with agony. “Don’t make a scene here, right in front of the damn Palace.”
The park would be swarming with guards and provosts in a heartbeat, and there would go my last hope of saving Holly. I cast a quick, fearful glance around. A young couple hurried away, clearly deciding this wasn’t a safe place for their morning tea after all. No one else had noticed his display yet.
Stolen Magic (Shadows of the Immortals Book 1) Page 12
